According to some solutions, prior to transfer onto a chuck, a wafer is pre-aligned. Then, the wafer is transferred onto a chuck where it is rotated while a radial distance from wafer edge to a centre of the chuck is measured. A sequence of these radial measurements is used to determine a centration of the wafer on the chuck, its translational position, and the location of flats or notches on its periphery which defines its rotational orientation, herein also referred to a polar position. The movement of the chuck assures rotational alignment, and a mechanism that then transfers the wafer to a workspace compensates for its translational misalignment. In this way, pre-aligners typically are able to align the wafer to within a degree of rotation and a few thousandths of an inch in translation. Ultimately, pre-alignment accuracy in knowing where die are located relies on the precision of the pre-aligner, the precision of the wafer transport mechanism and the precision with which die are placed on the wafer. With modern photolithography, device locations can repeat from wafer to wafer to within a few thousandths of an inch.